Today we’d like to introduce you to Shawn Frambach.
Hi Shawn, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I grew up in Azle, Texas with my mother and my brother, who actually received a kidney transplant when he was six from my mother shortly after my birth due to a kidney disease.
From a young age, I had an interest in making people laugh, which later led me to take improv classes at the Four Day Weekend comedy theatre right after high school, recommended by my friend Harrison O’neal. After being recommended to my first agent through a newfound comedy pal, I started doing commercials and appearing in a few small TV shows in Dallas. I also began performing at the Dallas Comedy House, which was owned and run by Amanda Austin and was an iconic institution that unfortunately closed down due to COVID-19.
Meanwhile, I got a job at Four Day Weekend as a show production assistant and house manager where I basically just helped a bunch of middle-aged men dress up into different costumes and outfits for their weekend shows. This got me free classes and a little bit of money. I then became involved in the training center side of Four Day Weekend where I eventually started teaching classes and running certain programs and shows, booking students, cleaning toilets, basically anything that needed to be done. I felt very lucky to be making a living in and around improv.
In February of 2012, I became a living organ donor and donated a kidney to my brother. At this time, he was on dialysis as the kidney he received from my mom was now no longer working. Since then I have helped a few other people who were potentially getting ready to donate and needed some insight and advice on the process. I have found that I really enjoy being a helpful hand for anyone with questions about my experience of organ donation and what it was REALLY like. There are so many myths around living organ donation and dispelling those has been really satisfying.
Over the next 10 years, I devoted myself to comedy and put most of my efforts into performing. Comedy consumed my whole life and all my friends and time revolved around this little world. It was my job, my hobby, my passion, my community. It was everything. I had the opportunity to meet many captivating and hilarious people, some of whom left me in constant awe and I was obsessed with. I dedicated a decade to grinding, performing, writing, and teaching and I never felt more at home than around those people. I was fortunate enough to be part of long-running and fan-favorite shows, including teams like “Stan” and “Charliework”, which were created with my closest lifelong friends. These are where all of my core memories are from.
After this large formative chunk of my life, I proposed to my girlfriend (whom I met through comedy) and we moved to LA. I was getting good commercial work in Dallas but I had always wanted to move to L.A. since I was a young little punk dreaming of train hopping my way to California. My agent at the time warned me not to do it and very kindly dropped me when I decided to do so. We packed up our lives, our three cats and drove everything we had 1,500 miles with a buddy of ours. It was the worst time we’ve ever experienced.
We got to L.A. in August 2018, almost a year before the COVID lockdowns started. It already takes so long to get embedded into L.A. and whatever scene/community you’re looking to join and COVID made it infinitely harder. I was in improv 201 at UCB when the lockdown started. So needless to say, trying to push further into the comedy community which is all I’ve ever known, has proven difficult and very expensive. Everything comedy-wise (shows, community) stopped for me cold turkey. During COVID I took online classes from Groundlings and UCB and later jumped back into in-person classes at UCB once things started opening back up.
Currently, I’m with an agent I love (Peter Kallinteris Agency or PKA) and I’m finding success in commercials and some theatrical stuff. Most recently, I’ve appeared in commercials for Hard Mountain Dew, Optimum, several for Comcast XFINITY, Adaptable Meals and many others. I was also recently casted and directed by Zach Woods (The Office, Silicon Valley) in his commercial directorial debut for Quill. My most recent theatrical booking was a co-star for Based on a True Story, the upcoming Paramount+ show; however, my character was written out.
I’m spending time writing sketch and character bits, auditioning, yelling at my cats, and working with very talented friends. I have a few things in the works currently from short films to sketch.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The physical trip to L.A. was unbelievably hard. Much harder than we expected. We were driving a big u-haul, towing a car, 3 cats, 1500 miles, hotel cancellations, and so on and so on and so on.
I really feel like quarantine stripped me of everything that informed my identity – comedy, friends, community, acting, and family. I didn’t have the culture and community I was used to having back home and I couldn’t really find it here because the whole world shut down. I was living in a liminal bubble where I felt amorphous and like I didn’t know who I was without those things in my life. I’m sure many, many people felt this way. In a way, I’m very grateful for it as it forced me to do things other than comedy full-time for the first time in over a decade. It allowed me to build a fuller, more balanced life where my every moment was hanging on acting or comedy. I found myself not as desperate in auditions or in life. I probably still come off as very desperate, though. But just know I’m not. Like at all.
Personally, I have always severely struggled with OCD and ADHD. I took lots of meds and therapy as an adolescent. ADHD is the first and last thing I still deal with every day. Mine is also co-morbid with anxiety and depression, like many other people. It sounds like such a common thing to say, but OCD ruined my life as a child and made it impossible to function in school or normal life. Luckily, my OCD has mostly turned into really cool ticks like grunting, weird facial movements and winking (I hope my dry humor comes across). However, I would like to say quarantine was the first time I’ve ever decided to take the time to treat my mental health and have experienced a major improvement.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
As an actor, I’m primarily known for off-beat and character comedy and love working off-script. Anytime I get a chance to improvise on set, I’m a happy little man. I’ve worked on projects where there was no actual script, only guided ideas of where scenes and the story needed to go and I find projects like that to be such a joy to do.
Improv-wise, I specialize in long-form narrative/plot-driven shows and big characters. I have also been doing sketch comedy for many years and that holds a special place in my heart.
One moment I could say I was proud of was during one of Dallas Comedy House’s King of the Mountain shows which is where two teams go back to back, the audience votes on their favorite, and the winner comes back next week to defend their title. I was defending the title with a team of two other very funny guys who unfortunately both had something come up before the show. I ended up doing my first improvised one-man show for 25 minutes. Somehow, I won! I think the audience was pretty drunk.
Some memorable moments that stick with me:
At my commercial audition with Zach Woods. It was an in-person callback and he was reading with everyone who came in. I am a big fan of Zach’s, he is an amazing performer, so needless to say I was thrilled to be there. The audition had lots of improvising in it and I genuinely had fun. It seemed like everything went well, I felt good. I was maybe a little light-headed giving the situation. At the end of the audition, Zach complimented me and I was on cloud 9. As I was stepping out of the room, I heard Zach say “Unless… you’d like to improvise some more?”. I was a little in shock at what was happening. I thought “This is the moment I’ve dreamt of forever.” And in that moment, I turned around and looked him dead in the eye and said, “I’m good.” and walked right out of the room. I think about this all the time. I’ve learned to really love moments like this living in L.A.
Also one time Mark Duplass and I swapped the clothes we were wearing in the middle of the coffee shop at which I moonlight.
After the lockdown when auditions started to pick back up, I randomly developed Bell’s palsy. Bell’s palsy causes half facial paralysis, so half of my face did not work for a little over a month. I was drooling all over myself and couldn’t close one eye and had trouble speaking. Weirdly, I got a lot of callbacks at that time.
One show I will never forget is the sketch revue I did with all of my absolute closest friends. It was called “Various Artists”. I wrote and performed some of my favorite sketches I’ve ever done and I closed out the show with an original song I wrote called “My love will be the death of me”. It also involved me making out with every cast member and one improvisor having to eat a full cake on stage with his hands every show.
Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
I grew up in a tiny trailer park in a little country town called Azle, Texas. Outside of the ADHD and OCD I mentioned which took a heavy toll on my early grade years, I found that I had a hard time applying myself and would much rather entertain someone. Being entertaining and kind of funny got me out of a lot of trouble and generally made things easier. I was a little punk kid with a big mohawk and couldn’t wait to leave my small town and go to California. I thought about it for years and idolized the train hopping my way out. Would I have actually done it, given the opportunity? I don’t know.
Through school, I mostly just tried to get laughs throughout the day – from teachers, students, whoever. I did find that I enjoyed socializing with teachers and other adults around than the other students.
I often skipped class. I even joined my photojournalism class so I could get a photo pass (which lets you wander school anytime) and I would use that to my advantage very frequently.
I was in a special program for people with learning issues because of my ADHD and OCD, whether or not I felt I was qualified to be there. I also used it to make advantage to leave any class at any time and would sometime just skateboard around the halls. My ADHD made it much easier to handle and deal with soft and social skills, but many other academic pursuits very tough.
Outside of school I skateboarded for over a decade. That was my whole world before comedy. Unfortunately, I also grew up in an era where making “Jackass” style videos was cool. And I made a lot of them. Jumping off of houses, running into things, getting hit with this thing and that thing. It’s a time I’m happy to forget.
Contact Info:
- Website: ShawnFrambach.com
- Instagram: @ShawnFrambach
Image Credits
Jonathan Stoddard Shawn Frambach
